#and their whole trope i'm totally stealing it for a gameplay

[turtlemagnum]

i have a pretty fundamental problem with the vast majority of post apocalyptic fiction, even fallout (one of my favorite series) falls prey to this: people are generally not evil assholes to one another for literally no reason, right? fuckin especially in survival situations.

like raiders, right? us humans have evolved over several millenia to have this little thing called "basic survival instinct", as have most other still-not-extinct species, right? and raiders just kinda laugh in the face of that, since a good way to get yourself killed in a resource squabble is to cause a resource squabble, especially when in virtually all other situations there's the far easier and quite frankly sane option of a mutual "stay the fuck away from me, i stay the fuck away from you" agreements, or y'know like.... mutual aid??? the thing that all social animals (including humans) evolved around??? like oh gee it's totally not like from a very practical darwinist perspective it's simply a provably and exceptionally effective strategy to just like, help each other out, y'know? not just from a strength in numbers perspective but from the perspective of "the more people you have, the more areas of expertise you have, therefore you can have a solid food source AND medicinal supplies", y'know? meanwhile, in fallout: new vegas (one of my favorite games in general btw) you have enough dipshit raiders bringing pool cues and turpentine to a gunfight that you can make a living just hawking their shit to traders.

and like, yeah, from a purely mechanical gameplay perspective? that works, that's fine, but from a "this is a purely hypothetical situation based heavily on the real world up to the point that our histories are the same up until the invention of the atom bomb" perspective, it's unnecessarily bleak and pessimistic to the point of illogicality

now, am i saying that there'd literally be no raiders, or that there'd literally be no people who are assholes for the sake of being assholes? hell fuckin no, but what i'm trying to get at is that practically speaking, most "raiders" would be the same type of deal as caesar's legion, you can't sustain a living off of stealing shit and killing babies, ya gotta have people feeling secure enough to have babies before you can eat them.... Oh Right that's a whole fuckin other thing, right?

why does every post apocalyptic story think we'd all default to cannibalism???? like if a friend of mine had to get a leg amputated and offered me a bite i wouldn't turn it down but like, in literally any other situation cannibalism is a hard no for pretty much everybody, my own weirdness not withstanding. and we're not even that nutritious!!!!! and we grow at a slow enough rate that it wouldn't be feasible to regularly eat other humans!!!!! and also you get like diseases and shit from it!!! fuckt up from both a moral and logistical sense!!!!

i feel the same way about orcs in most tolkein-adjacent bad D&D settings where it's like. ohhhh yeahhhh these guys just murder and pillage and they don't farm or build but they have a massive army despite not having the logistical groundwork required to keep and maintain a standing fucking army..... do you know how hard it is to maintain a fucking army???? i have only the vaguest idea, and even i (a dumbass) know that it takes a fucking lot, and certainly a lot more than being a raider bullshit society can supply

now: i'm not saying that a lack of realism is inherently bad, i have well over a thousand hours in oblivion and new vegas, both of which use this trope and i'd argue quite effectively. it can be used especially well as a gameplay mechanic. but, i'd say that raiders are one of those things that are like, "yeah sounds plausible" when left unexamined but completely falls apart under any real amount of scrutiny, which becomes Actually egregious when the story's like. "in a fucked up world where HUMANITY is the REAL MONSTER..... and also there's a literal apocalypse going on but THE REAL PROBLEM IS THE INHUMANITY OF OUR FELLOW MAN" and it's like. no. what are you basing that off of. actual historical disasters? because you'll generally find that in major historical disasters, the story goes like "yeah something fucked up happened and a lot of people died but the survivors are holding together :)!" y'know? and honestly like, in terms of zombies and shit, i'm gonna level with you and say that maybe the literal shambling corpses that want to eat your flesh are the real monsters, not jimbob mcdonorson, the guy who has way too many guns and consists on a diet of canned beans and peanutbutter crackers but would probably let you have some if you asked nicely, habeas corpus ya feel me

this rant made me think of an early AI dungeon thing i did where i was like "why not, i'll do zombie apocalypse", and while i was looting a grocery store everyone else was just chill and like "oh hey dude how're you doin' :)" and waving as we passed by one another and people were really nice to one another, and i'm not saying that it'd be exactly like that but i'd be willing to bet that in a real life zombie apocalypse, it could be like a less cheery version of that in some spots

this got away from me but i think you get the point, and honestly this isn't supposed to be a mushy "aww the commonality of humanity helps us persevere through even the roughest of times" kinda rant but moreso a thing of "most people aren't assholes on purpose", y'know?